These are "Egyptian Walking Onions." We learned about them at Old Sturbridge Village. They have an onion flavor, and the entire plant is edible.
The reason they are called "Walking Onions" is that the bulbs at the end of the stalks eventually get heavy, and the stalk bends over as the bulb touches the ground. At this point, a new plant will grow. They can walk right across your garden that way!
Yesterday I made pesto (see post of 7-10-2010), as you might guess from the cropped basil in the background of the photo. I also had a few leftover bell peppers. As a side dish, I decided to cook up the peppers in my 8" cast iron skillet with some olive oil. I added two stalks of the Egyptian Walking Onions, cut like scallions. I also added a spoonful of that all-purpose "Wow" seasoning that we like. In the photo below, you can see that the fork is pointing at one of the cut-up walking onion stalk bits.
The "Notta Pasta" rice fettuccini is a good pairing with the pesto. Once it was cooked, I was careful to rinse it with hot water that I heated on the stove as I cooked the pasta. Too much mixing doesn't work here (it gets gummy!) ..... so I gently mixed my pesto without the cheese into the pasta, and we generously added parmesan on top, at our individual plates.
After this dinner, John was meeting friends at a restaurant where he did not feel comfortable about it being gluten free....it was an Italian restaurant with lots of opportunity for cross-contamination. He went ahead to meet his friends, simple joining them with a beverage, feeling comfortably full from our home-cooked meal.
